It is time, my little scrunchies, to conjure for the world another dab, another dollop, of some flash fiction.

Once again, you have five words to play with:

Frog

Powder

Seagull

Tower

Scissors.

You need to choose only one of those five words.

Yes, that’s right. Only one.

That one word must feature prominently in your fiction, whether directly or as a clear and forthright inspiration. You do not have 1,000 words but rather, you have 100. A hundred words, no more. That way, nobody will be taken away from NaNoWriMo if they’re participating for more than a mere handful of words.

[…] again?” Wendig has come up with another one of his 100-word flash fiction challenges: Frog Powder Seagull Tower Scissors. As usual, the idea is to write a short-short (I think hereabouts we call the 100-word-exactly form […]

…That’s weird. The pingback showed up, but not the actual comment that I left. Lemme try that again…

Russet Powder

The fine rusty powder coated every surface inside the abandoned Beamer. Detective Inspector Graumann couldn’t make head nor tail of it, nor of the sharpened oak shaft protruding loose from the centre of the black velvet driver’s side seat cover.

A Forensics trainee passed a twine sightline from the splintered wooden head of the arrow through the windscreen entry hole. When the clumsy labrat cut a finger on the glass, Graumann sighed at his contaminated crime scene.

The powder sizzled and coalesced around the spilling droplets. Graumann clutched for his mother’s crucifix as the powder regathered into hissing human shape.

2 Seagull s, a Cricket, and a planted Idea.
The cricket threw up his thin arms and scream with urgency “WAIT! Don’t eat me.”
The first seagull flapped his wings in protest “Now, why can’t I eat you?”
The cricket responded “Haven’t you heard of ‘Mad Cricket Desease’?”
“No, what is that?” another frustrated flap and then he tucked his wing in to get closer.
“It causes stiff joints, makes your brain numb, you do strange things, and…”
The second seagull asked “Why did you eat him, you’ll get sick?”
“That’s just stupid.” The first seagull searched for more dinner.

What was it that Jake Barnes said? “Gradually, and then suddenly”? That was how it was. First sales dropped, then suppliers stopped shipping because I couldn’t pay, and then sales dropped because you were out of everything. I had cooked myself the last batch of french fries we had, but even after they cooled, I couldn’t stomach them. I pitched them one by one onto the ground in front of me, watching the seagulls dive and caw, scooping them up in the October air. They say nature is so delicate, but some species are meant to survive anything.

They each thought I knew nothing. That I was naught but an innocent girl, whistling sweetly from my innocent perch. I saw him below, lurking about in the garden day after day. He was there one morning when Mother called out to let down my hair. So when the Prince called out, I knew what came next for hadn’t my mother warned me time and time again? And come he did.

I got what I wanted. Now my children and I roam, free from them both; stalker and witch.

Murder saturates the ground all around me. It was late when they attacked. They’re like ghosts in the darkness, lightning strikes leaving flayed flesh. I don’t know how many I’ve gunned down, but the smell of blood and gunfire permeates my nostrils and its getting hard to breathe. The hole in my gut burns and my hands can’t hold back the wound’s gushing flow.

One bullet left. God forgive me. I pull the trigger, one final blast of powder and then oblivion.

The grey powder left behind in the dragons passing had blurred his vision. He tried to focus his eyes on the aftermath. His band of misfits had been caught inside the tavern while celebrating their successful raid on the dragon’s den. He quickly searched for Shawna. Everyone looked the same, their bodies covered by powder.
“Looks like you’ll have a few new scars.” She called from behind him.
Relief flashed through him as he turned towards her. The combination of her presence and his near death experience made her irresistible. He pulled her closer and gave her a passionate kiss.

Peering through the circle of men, the young girl could see the clenched fists of two boys facing each other. Her own fists were tightly bound to the chair by rope, the fibers tearing into the flesh of her wrists. Ignoring the pain, she pulled on the ropes in a hopeless attempt to free herself.

The clenched fists of the boys moved up and down as the men chanted “One, two, three…”

One of the boys fist opened and his hand was flat. The other hand showed two fingers extended.

Arturo Fuego, who in ten years would be hailed as the greatest dramatic tenor of his generation, stood in the wings with a frog in his throat.

The opera-goers had just discovered Enrico Arboles would not be performing his most famous role, having developed a severe fever an hour before. The theatre was deeply in debt and so had not cancelled the performance. Bringing in the understudy was a risk they had to take.

“The audience expects nothing of you,” his father had said over the phone. “Forget Arboles. Be Fuego.”

The bouncy ball was bisphenol-b. When the princess accidentally tossed it into a well, it sank to the bottom.

A frog croaked, “I’ll fetch it for you, for a kiss.”

“Okay,” the princess said.

“Kiss, then ball,” the frog said.

Their lips touched. The frog grew and the green localized to tights and a jacket; obviously a prince. The princess forgot about the ball.

They didn’t live happily ever after. As a frog, the prince had absorbed a lot of pseudo-estrogens. His vestigial third leg gave the princess the willies, and his sperm count was insufficient to provide heirs, anyway.

“The knight eyed the tower, a predatory smirk on his face. He was ready. After hours of stalking, he would finally conquer that ever elusive tower. The tower shook in fear, knowing its time had come, its exits blocked and the knight a mere L-shape away. Straight lines hadn’t been enough to find freedom, and so, the end is nigh.”

“…Duo.”

“What?”

“Play the damn game.”

He picked up his piece and knocked over Heero’s castle with obnoxious sound effects and a cheesy scream. Then he lined the piece up with others he’d captured and waited for Heero to move.

I cut the film into thirty-six clips and spliced it together with special tape. I got it on a reel and played it through a projector. It was thirty-six perfect moments, real on the wall at twenty-four frames per second.

Later it occurred to me that the actual moment was the light, not the film. By the one source, each frame of film experienced.

I cut up a lot more film, ended up with the special tape from beginning to end. My life looks a lot more choppy now, but every moment is exactly what I want it to be.